Cultural memory and making by US Central Americans. Issue 4 (November 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Alvarado, Karina
• Is Part Of: Latino studies. Volume 15:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 476
• Page End: 497
• Publication Date: 2017-11
• Subjects: Cultural memory -- US Central Americans -- Counternarratives -- Diasporic Latinidad -- Central American cultural production in the US -- Counterhegemonies; Hispanic Americans -- Periodicals; Hispanic Americans -- Ethnic identity -- Periodicals; Hispanic Americans -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; United States -- Ethnic relations -- Periodicals; 305.8468
• DOI: 10.1057/s41276-017-0093-8
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1476-3435

Abstract

Abstract This article centralizes the work of Central American US diasporic writers and artists within memory studies while expanding on the emergent ways of seeing and being for US-born or raised Central Americans. I posit that the three cultural makers portrayed in this essay—William Archila (poet), Dalila Paola Mendez (artist), and Cristina Henríquez (novelist)—represent a tendency of writers and artists to embark on projects that signify directly onto Central America through a lens of the imagined from within the United States. Archila'sThe Art of Exile (2009) explores the persistence of generational trauma and the deep ambivalence carried within migrant Salvadorans who arrived in the United States as youths during the Salvadoran Civil War. Mendez's painting of Tayte Feliciano Ama, painted in the style of La Palma, reimagines Los Angeles to recuperate the indigenous leader of the 1930s and the Salvadoran folk art movement. Henríquez' novelThe World in Half (2009) focuses on Panama; the protagonist must work through erasures and denials to recuperate the memories of her North American mother and Panamanian father to reconcile with her own Panamanian American identity. The cultural memory work of these artists and writers contributes to diverse constructions of Latinidad in the United States through counterpoetics, countervisuals, and counternarratives.